The Chunghwa Telecom Workers’ Union yesterday said it has called off a strike planned for Saturday after Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) promised to raise wages next year.
Union members protested on Monday at the telecom’s headquarters in Taipei, demanding a comprehensive raise of NT$7,500 per person and changes to their pension fund system. They threatened to strike on election day.
Some workers set up tents inside the main office building at the headquarters, saying that they were prepared to fight until management agreed to their demands.
Photo: CNA
The ministry is the largest shareholder of the telecom, which was privatized in 1995.
“We were prepared to escalate the protest to a national strike, and were even ready for a long-term battle because the management kept ignoring our demands,” union chairman Hung Hsiu-lung (洪秀龍) said. “However, the transportation minister came in on Monday afternoon with Chunghwa Telecom chairman Sheih Chi-mau (謝繼茂) to negotiate with employees. The minister also thought the workers were not making unreasonable demands.”
While employees were promised a raise next year, management and the union still need to negotiate over the exact amount of the increase, Hung said.
“We will definitely give the management a chance if they are serious about keeping their promises. If not, we will have no trouble quickly mobilizing our members and resources for a strike,” he said.
The starting salary of a Chunghwa Telecom employee at nearly NT$40,000 per month is higher than those of workers at state-run corporations or agencies operated by the ministry, government data showed.
Employees at the Taiwan Railways Administration have the lowest starting salary of NT$30,040 per month following a raise in August, while entry-level employees at Chunghwa Post earn about NT$38,000 per month, which includes work-related allowances.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was wooing leaders from across Africa with a banquet on Wednesday night, King Mswati III of Eswatini was notably absent. That is because the kingdom — about the size of New Jersey and with just 1.2 million people — is one of Taiwan’s remaining dozen diplomatic allies. That means Eswatini does not participate in Xi’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the centerpiece of China’s diplomatic outreach to Africa, which was held in Beijing this week. The landlocked nation, which sits between Mozambique and South Africa, is the last holdout in Beijing’s seven-plus decade mission to make Africa
RSS